Note: Although screencaps should only be considered an idea of what the disc looks like, click any capture in this review to expand the image to a full size .png.

When Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 was released on video, it arrived with a new extended cut adding seven more minutes of footage. The implication was that more extended cuts would follow, but the Twilight Forever: Complete Saga Blu-ray set only contained the theatrical versions of the other four films. Now...Read the entire review

"Who is John Wick?" is a question you likely found yourself asking when you saw the ads for the new Keanu Reeves movie. If you're like me, you fired up IMDB to see what the film was based on. A series of books like Jack Reacher? An older action franchise like The Equalizer? Or maybe Keanu had found some obscure comic book? After all, he was the first on-film Constantine.

The answer is none of the above. John Wick is a wholly new creation, that rare beast of Hollywood that is neither a remake nor a reboot nor an adaptation. It's the simplest and most ingenious marketing. The filmmakers, most of them stepping into their spe...Read the entire review

The majority of the American-made action films are based upon long-running franchise, video games, comic books, and figurines. When it comes to the major Hollywood studios, it's becoming increasingly difficult to discover an original feature that has been written directly for the screen. The ones that exist are often PG-13 rated flicks with cuts that are so fast, that we can't even see what's going on. This is no way to enjoy a proper action film. Writer Derek Kolstad and directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski understand this. With a relatively new screenplay writer and a pair making their directorial debut, John Wick feels so surprisingly realized. It's so self-aware, exciting, and violent, that you just can't help but applaud when the final credits begin rolling. A...Read the entire review
]]> DivergentDVD Videohttp://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=65171
Sat, 09 Aug 2014 11:39:45 PDTRecommended

The Film:

As some modern movie adaptations of popular young-adult books elevate expectations of what they're capable of, there are a slate of recent others -- from The Mortal Instruments to The Host and Percy Jackson -- that serve as a reminder of the turbulence still plaguing the subgenre. Despite Hollywood's progress in the halls of Hogwarts and the districts of Panem, there's still a lot of kinks that haven't been worked out in balancing solid fil...Read the entire review
]]> Divergent (Blu-ray)Blu-rayhttp://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=64323
Sat, 09 Aug 2014 11:39:45 PDTRecommended

The Film:

As some modern movie adaptations of popular young-adult books elevate expectations of what they're capable of, there are a slate of recent others -- from The Mortal Instruments to The Host and Percy Jackson -- that serve as a reminder of the turbulence still plaguing the subgenre. Despite Hollywood's progress in the halls of Hogwarts and the districts of Panem, there's still a lot of kinks that haven't been worked out in balancing solid fil...Read the entire review
]]> The Legend of Hercules (3-D) (Blu-ray)Blu-rayhttp://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=64128
Sat, 17 May 2014 07:16:25 PDTRent It

Normally I avoid high-concept, CGI-driven spectacles like The Legend of Hercules (2014) and anything directed by Renny Harlin (Cutthroat Island) especially, but in this case I made an exception. For starters the bar is set very low on a picture like this. A movie about Hercules immediately brings to mind the peplum/sword-and-sandal genre of roughly 1957-1965 when, following the international success of Hercules (1957), Italian filmmakers went to town, producing literally hundreds of similar films over the space of less than ten years, including at least 19 more official Hercules movies.

Most of these pictures were cut-rate and uninspired, but the best ones, like the later Spaghetti Western genre that overnight supplanted it, occasionally remain quite enjoyable. (Goliath and the Dragon, Hercules in the Haunted World, Hercules Against the Moon Men, and ...Read the entire review

The first time I saw the trailer I was iffy about Transcendence. The second time I saw the trailer I was pretty sure it would be bad. It's not that the parts that make up the film are awful. I love sci-fi, and the A.I. storyline is very interesting. Johnny Depp is an amazing actor, as is Morgan Freeman. Paul Bettany is always strong, and I was curious to watch Rebecca Hall. No, the problem wasn't the actors or the plot or even the director, who would be making his debut. The thing that concerned me was the flow of the film. I know it's just a trailer, but I could already see signs of a disjointed story, of an overworked idea,...Read the entire review

Let me start out by saying that I love football. I was born a Broncos fan, my dad having grown up in Colorado, and my first year of life was John Elway's rookie year in the league. So of course he was my hero, I followed him through his ups & downs, eventually winning two Super Bowls right alongside him, or so it seemed to me. But it isn't just Denver that I follow; I love the game. As a kid I had a Franco Harris jersey, later a Brett Favre, of course a Tebow & a Manning. I watch every game I can, any team, doesn't matter, study the depth charts, play fantasy football, decorate my basement blue & orange. And as an Ohioan, a lot ...Read the entire review

If it's possible to make the All the President's Men of football, Draft Day is somehow it. It's more "follow the money" than "show me the money," building a surprisingly vivacious narrative out of phone calls, back-room deals, and studying video tape. The filmmakers are chasing the success of Moneyball here, and are somewhat successful. If nothing else, it makes for an apt comparison. Yet, unlike Bennett Miller's film, Draft Day doesn't ever move out on the field, and though it's not necessarily the better flick for that decision, it is more fun.

Book adaptations on the big screen have been doing pretty well for themselves lately. While the quality isn't always there, they almost always seem to bring in a fairly large box office sum, as proven by titles such as The Hunger Games and Twilight. These books already have dedicated fan bases that are usually interested in seeing the film adaptation to see how it has been brought to the silver screen. However, it can get a little bit tricky, as it isn't an easy feat to turn an entire book into a concise and well-paced film. Director Neil Burger and writers Evan Daugherty and Vanessa Taylor have been tasked to bring the first entry of the Divergent book series to the silver screen. Audiences have yet to see this film, yet it has already drawn a lot of comp...Read the entire review
]]> Escape Plan (Blu-ray)Blu-rayhttp://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=62989
Wed, 29 Jan 2014 20:58:45 PSTRecommended

THE FILM:

Click an image to view Blu-ray screenshot with 1080p resolution.

A film about Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone escaping a maximum-security prison together is either going to be something you want to see or it isn't. Escape Plan slid under the radar last fall and seemed like the icing on a particularly bad year for the indestructible duo following their individual bombs The Last Stand and Bullet to ...Read the entire review

Orson Scott Card's 1985 novel "Ender's Game" is the favorite book of many an adolescent boy who longs to lead an army of futuristic warships into battle against a faceless nemesis. It took nearly three decades for the most famous entry in Scott's thirteen-novel series to make it to theaters, and the audience response was surprisingly tepid. That may have had something to do with Card's anti-gay statements that whipped up a PR nightmare for Lionsgate on the eve of the film's release last October. Card's political and social views do not creep into the film, which reveals itself as a quality if somewh...Read the entire review

Not having seen the first Red film yet having a relatively good idea of what it was about, I was surprised to see that there was a sequel in the works for it. There was that big of a demand for older actors reprising some of their former glory (along with newer ones looking to impress) did not seem like a recipe for success. Then I saw what the box office receipts for the film and understood why a sequel was ordered. So hey, more Red, more often, bring on the second film!

TheTwilight Sagaconsists of five feature films (Twilight, NewMoon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn: Part 1,and Breaking Dawn: Part 2) based upon thebestselling book series written by author Stephenie Meyer. There islittledoubt that this has been one of the largest pop-culture series releasedincinemas in the past decade: after all, the first film in the seriessurprised withan outstanding opening to the tune of al...Read the entire review

I had only seen bits and pieces of Kevin Hart's standup work on YouTube before viewing Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain, which presents his complete 2012 performance at Madison Square Garden. Hart uses the venue to riff on his recent divorce, worldwide tour, romantic relationships and everyday challenges as a newly single parent. The comedian commands the stage and has the audience in stitches during the roughly hour-long performance. The camera focuses almost exclusively on Hart, who triggers exag...Read the entire review

The MovieMagic is awesome. For as odd and geeky as it can be, and when you take a look at Doug Henning, those are both fitting descriptors, at its core, magic is pretty great. Being able to make people believe in the bending of reality is an amazing talent, and being able to give yourself over to the idea that magic could exist is a great way to make life amazing. Great magic is unlike pretty much any other performing art, because instead of showing something to the audience, you're hiding something, and tha...Read the entire review

Dwayne Johnson's tough-guy swagger and imposing physical presence do not faze the agents of the international drug cartel to which Johnson's construction-company owner John Matthews finds himself suddenly tied. Johnson plays against type as a desperate suburban father who agrees to help the Feds make a high-profile drug arrest in exchange for releasing his eighteen-year-old son from prison. Snitch is based on true events and directed by Ric Roman Waugh, who gained a minor cult following with h...Read the entire review

]]> Now You See MeTheatricalhttp://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=61158
Thu, 30 May 2013 19:49:22 PDTRent It

The act of performing magic tricks has become a hobby for countless people around the world. However, we all know that these are simply illusions that are meant to trick the mind into believing that it's real. It has transformed itself into an entire entertainment empire, as it's performed around the globe. The astonishment on one's face after viewing a shocking magic trick is what makes it so enchanting. With The Incredible Burt Wonderstone being released in March, the studios are trying to cash in on this industry. In Louis Leterrier's Now You See Me, he's aiming to create an exciting crime thriller that will leave viewers with the same shock as one has after an unbelievable illusion. However, it doesn't take an expert magician to see through the deceptions in ...Read the entire review
]]> Warm Bodies (Blu-ray)Blu-rayhttp://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=60805
Sun, 26 May 2013 06:23:35 PDTHighly Recommended

In 10 Words or LessThe tough decision between a meal and a relationship

The MovieWarm Bodies is as pandering as a film concept can get while still being original and entertaining. Take the fantasy love story of Twilight (complete with a cute, young, blood-thirsty monster) and add in the over-exposed crowd-pleasing genre of zombie movies, give it a PG-13 rating and you've got a flick programmed to sell tickets to proto-goth tweens. The thing is, along the way, writer/director Jonathan Levine (50/50, T...Read the entire review

So much of what occurred during the 2004 earthquake in the Indian Ocean and the subsequent tsunami that followed was both breathtaking and staggering to witness for those of us who saw the news footage. To see those that survived the disaster, one cannot begin to comprehend the type of ordeal that they had to go through, and those who managed to reunite with loved ones are even luckier still. One of those stories is retold in The Impossible, which garnered critical acclaim for some of its performers.

The film is based on the story of Mar a Bel n and her family, who relayed their experiences to Sergio S nchez and Juan Antonio Bayona (both of whom created the 2008 film (The Orphanage). S nchez wrote the screenplay and Bayona directed Mar a (Naomi Watts, Read the entire review

Both ruffling feathers and sending hearts aflutter for over five years, Twilight's contortion of vampire lore finally arrives at an end with a sprawling, teary-eyed two-part finale, Breaking Dawn. Ever a revolving door for directors, but constantly penned by Melissa Rosenberg with the watchful input from the books' author, Stephenie Meyer, the series' quality has rendered an inconsistent train of gratingly passable supernatural romance, overdrawn and dramatically limp when looked at under any kind of inspection. Finishing off the slate of filmmakers brave enough to handle the material is Dreamgirls and Gods and Monsters director Bill Condon, who, based on his experience, knows how to navigate a larger production and handle tricky thematic material...Read the entire review
]]> The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (Extended Edition) (Blu-ray)Blu-rayhttp://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=60042
Thu, 21 Mar 2013 19:32:33 PDTRent It

Both ruffling feathers and sending hearts aflutter for over five years, Twilight's contortion of vampire lore finally arrives at an end with a sprawling, teary-eyed two-part finale, Breaking Dawn. Ever a revolving door for directors, but constantly penned by Melissa Rosenberg with the watchful input from the books' author, Stephenie Meyer, the series' quality has rendered an inconsistent train of gratingly passable supernatural romance, overdrawn and dramatically limp when looked at under any kind of inspection. Finishing off the slate of filmmakers brave enough to handle the material is Dreamgirls and Gods and Monste...Read the entire review
]]> OnceDVD Videohttp://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=60012
Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:57:53 PDTHighly Recommended

Director: John CarneyStarring: Glen Hansard, Marketa Irglova

Once in a while a film has an effect on you. It happens. No one is immune. Something about a particular film gets to you in a particular way. Maybe you can't explain it, maybe you don't understand it, but you feel it, and that's enough. Once in a great while one film has that effect on millions of people all at the same time. That's when you know something special has happened; when so many people, critics, audiences, everyone, feel changed by a film. Once is that movie. It is that feeling. And it's undefinable. But isn't that what makes it wonderful?

Rarely does a modern horror film fill me with the kind of dread that makes pedestrian scenes feel ripe for a jolt. Sinister, from Director Scott Derrickson, creates an impressively tense atmosphere without resorting to buckets of gore, and kept me unnerved for its entire length. Ethan Hawke plays a true-crime writer that drags his unwitting family to live in a home where four people were murdered. He uncovers a box of Super 8 snuff films in the attic, and each shows another family meeting a g...Read the entire review

Since being published in 1999, Stephen Chbosky's "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" has frequently loomed near the top of the ALA's "most challenged books" chart for situations and themes centering on young outsiders, enough to make conservative foreheads sweat. Underneath a sincere exploration of sexuality, drug use, and the grief and depression that fuel suicide, this epistolary coming-of-age story is instead much closer to a comforting embrace than something to fret over; and, really, the "potentially banned" label only strengthens the resolve to seek out stories like this for their candor. The novel maintains a tricky balance while telling high-scho...Read the entire review
]]> Warm BodiesTheatricalhttp://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59844
Thu, 31 Jan 2013 18:06:06 PSTRecommended

With television shows, such as AMC's The Walking Dead, and countless feature films, zombies are starting to become the "new" vampires. The Twilight Saga sparked an insane amount of interest in teenagers, and even some of their parents. Now that one popular phenomenon has ended, something must come along to take its place. This is where Summit Entertainment's Warm Bodies swoops in to spark a similar interest for zombies. Genre fans may not be happy, but this is a big step up from Stephenie Meyer's overly dramatic franchise. Audiences should just be glad that our characters don't sparkle this time around.

R (Nicholas Hoult) is a highly unusual zombie who roams the airport along with numerous other infected beings. After attacking a group of the uninfe...Read the entire review
]]> Alex Cross (Blu-ray)Blu-rayhttp://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59299
Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:05:42 PSTSkip It

Click on all images in this review for 1080p screenshots.

I was intrigued when I saw the trailer for Alex Cross some time ago, but there were two things about it that heightened my skepticism - First, the trailer went to extraordinary lengths to promote style over substance, and second but most certainly not least, Tyler Perry wasn't reaching out to me in a way th...Read the entire review
]]> The ImpossibleTheatricalhttp://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59086
Thu, 20 Dec 2012 19:25:42 PSTRecommended

The news is always filled with heart-wrenching stories, often involving death. Some of the most soul-crushing reports to read are those about natural disasters. The Impossible tells a story revolving around the 2004 tsunami in Thailand. No matter how much time passes, the emotional power of this disaster will always be gut-wrenching. Director Juan Antonio Bayona and writer Sergio G. S nchez have taken a huge risk by creating a motion picture around such a touchy subject. If it isn't done correctly, audiences could find it to be insulting to the victims and survivors. Fortunately, that isn't the case with The Impossible. If movies make you cry easily, then be sure to bring a box of tissues with you to the theater.

The plot follows the account of a family wh...Read the entire review
]]> The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2Theatricalhttp://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=58869
Fri, 16 Nov 2012 04:22:40 PSTRent It

The Twilight Saga has been incredibly popular ever since the books were released. As soon as a movie deal was struck, the fans have been foaming at the mouth to see the next adaptation. Even though they enjoyed each one, the rest of us have found them to be uneventful, unintentionally funny, and an outright mess. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 is supposedly the final piece of the franchise and fans are wondering if it will end on a high note. While the previous entries are simply unwatchable, this finale is clearly the best movie of the series, but that's not saying much. The previous entries featured a teenage girl constantly whining while being in the middle of a love triangle, which got stale extremely quickly. Fortunately, the final entry delivers th...Read the entire review
]]> SinisterTheatricalhttp://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=58441
Thu, 11 Oct 2012 16:59:18 PDTRecommended

The horror genre has unfortunately become known for its jump "scares" and loud sound effects. While these techniques may startle some audiences in the theater, they don't have any long-lasting effects, yet they have become implanted within these genre pictures. Every now and then, we're surprised with a movie that manages to be genuinely scary. Sinister is one of those movies that will leave haunting images in your mind before going to bed that night. While it isn't the complete package, this is an effective horror film that will leave you feeling uncomfortable.

Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) is a struggling true-crime novelist, who begins to write about a slain family by moving his own family into the house where the deaths occurred. He hopes to find what the poli...Read the entire review
]]> SinisterTheatricalhttp://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=58435
Thu, 11 Oct 2012 16:59:18 PDTRent It

For Sinister, Ethan Hawke, who sometimes pretends to be a writer in real life, pretends to be one onscreen. In the movie, Hawke is Ellison Oswalt, a true crime author chasing the ghosts of his past success...and who will soon find himself being chased by actual ghosts, which he believes will be the key to his future success.

Ellison has a pattern of uprooting his family--wife, son, and daughter--whenever he is working on a new subject. He likes to get close to the crime scene he's writing about. This time, he has moved the Oswalt clan directly into the house where his subjects actually lived. Four people were hung in the backyard, and the youngest daughter of the murdered family went missing. This is a fact that Ellison keeps secret from his wife (the poorly cast Julie...Read the entire review

Coming-of-age stories have become incredibly popular in young adult literature. While some of them may be great on paper, the film adaptations can be disappointing. Sometimes they're melodramatic, making them feel similar to soap operas. A well-known young adult novel called The Perks of Being a Wallflower has been seen as an important book for many teenagers. Younger readers are able to identify with the protagonist and some of the issues that he's confronted with, such as love, depression, and loneliness. The story is told from the perspective of a high school freshman dealing with adolescence, which is a point in life that everybody can relate to. This is a film that tugs on the heartstrings, but also has meaningful messages to get across such as being there for frie...Read the entire review
]]> The Perks of Being a WallflowerTheatricalhttp://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=58135
Thu, 20 Sep 2012 19:08:41 PDTRecommended

The trouble with critiquing the film adaptation of a beloved novel is that, invariably, some wisenheimer has to pipe up and tell you that whatever issue you've taken with the film--a plot point, a characterization, what have you--was present in the book, and was thus absolutely necessary, which you'd know if you've read the book you unread ignoramus, etc. etc. (For whatever it's worth, if I took the time to read the source material before seeing every film adapted from a book, I'd never see any movies.) But a film is not, and should not be, a companion dramatization, performed for the benefit of the reader; it must exist as its own entity, and whatever doesn't translate must go.

This is a very long way of getting around to saying that, for much of its running time, Stepehn C...Read the entire review

It's a bit strange that for a movie called Man on a Ledge, I was least interested in the scenes actually involving a man being on a ledge. Surprisingly, it fell to the supporting cast to inject some fun and suspense into the proceedings with their individual storylines. Without them, I would have probably walked away from this film with a far less positive opinion.

Before we go any further, let's talk about who the man is and how he comes to find himself on a ledge. His name is Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) and he used to be a cop. Now he's serving a 25 year prison term after being accused of stealing a sizable diamond from prominent businessman David Englander (Ed Harris). Having run out of legal options to profess his innocence, Nick decides to take matters into his own hands. He takes advantage of an unfortunate family circumstance and stages a daring ...Read the entire review

Man on a Ledge is often preposterous, and its plot twists do not always make sense. It's neither particularly original nor especially memorable, but the movie is entertaining for 102 minutes. After leaving prison, Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) heads to New York City's Roosevelt Hotel, where he climbs out a window and stands on a narrow ledge overlooking the city. As expected, there is more to the story than just a suicidal ex-con, and Elizabeth Banks, Jamie Bell and Ed Harris all get involved in the plot. Slick, quick and just dumb enough to be fun, Man on a Ledge is passable escapist entertainment.